Earth-working machines, for example, excavators, continuous miners, and loaders, often include ground engaging work tools that engage with and/or move a variety of earthen materials. Furthermore, tracked undercarriages that facilitate movement of the machines over ground surfaces and other moving parts of these machines may engage with the ground surface or earthen materials. Repeated exposure to hard work materials or the ground surface may cause one or more components of these machines to wear.
Conventional techniques for detecting wear on the machine components include manual measurements of component dimensions, which may be compared against specified dimensions of the components. Such manual measurements are not only time consuming but also can be inaccurate. Inaccurate measurements of the component dimensions in turn may result in incorrect predictions regarding the remaining life of the component. As a result, the component may either fail too early or may not be worn enough to require replacement or repair when the machine is removed from service for maintenance. Thus, there is a need for accurate measurement of component dimensions on a machine in its work environment to allow for improved component life predictions, which may help reduce the down time associated with repair or replacement of worn out components.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,805,289 B2 to Corby Jr. et al. (“the '289 patent”) that issued on Sep. 8, 1998, discloses a system for performing measurements on an industrial component, including a portable coordinate measurement machine (CMM) and a digital camera. The '289 patent discloses that spatial reference devices (SRDs) having a known distance between reference points and known dimensions are attached to the component. A digital camera is used to obtain overlapping images of the component, including the SRDs. The '289 patent also discloses that a coordinate measurement machine (CMM) measures points on the digital camera and calculates its position and orientation (“pose”) for each digital image. The '289 patent discloses that the actual world 3D coordinates of the target centers of the optical targets of the SRD are measured using the CMM. According to the '289 patent, a photogrammetry unit reads in the digital images and the pose of the digital camera for each image, and performs standard photogrammetry techniques to determine the relative 3D locations of common points on the images. In addition, the '289 patent discloses that a dimension calculation unit may be used to calculate 3D dimensions between actual 3D locations based on the dimensional measurements of the SRDs and dimensional measurements of the camera positions made by the CMM.
Although the '289 patent discloses the use of digital imaging and photogrammetry for measurement of dimensions on a component, the disclosed device and methods may still not be optimal. In particular, the disclosed device requires the use of precision machined SRDs attached to the component and further requires the use of a coordinate measurement machine to record the dimensions of the SRDs and the pose of the camera for each digital image. Use of the CMM and SRDs may make the disclosed device cumbersome and expensive to use. Moreover, the disclosed device requires the component to be taken out of service for performing the measurements. Such down time may not be practical or desirable for ensuring optimum utilization of the component.
The wear measurement system of the present disclosure solves one or more of the problems set forth above and/or other problems in the art.